Chapter 5: Merponies
Lost at Sea
Chapter 5: Merponies
Admiral Biscuit
Cloud had completely lost track of days. Moons, she still knew. That was a smaller number to count.
The day after her third moon at sea, she saw a big storm on the horizon, and by midday it was obvious it was headed in her direction.
She pushed her cloud up as high as she could, where it would hopefully be above the worst of it, but it turned out that wasn't high enough. She abandoned her home as the storm rolled over it, eagerly devouring her pitiful little cloud.
Even though it did no good, she swore at the storm as it wrecked her home, swallowing up the cloud and dropping the seaweed she’d been keeping back to the ocean. That was the saddest reminder of her former home—strands of dried seaweed fluttering back down to the waves like autumn leaves.
For two days, she rode on top of the storm, doing her best to find the safest perches as the clouds pitched and twisted below her. She did not dare to attempt to fly under it and fish. She spent the entire third day of the storm gathering new cloud bits to make another home, since she could see this storm was breaking apart.
It wasn't as good as her last home had been—three moons of boredom had let her make quite a few improvements—but this time she'd been smart and gathered more clouds together, which might cut down on the number of emergency repairs she would have to make.
By the dawn of the fourth day, the last dregs of the storm were nowhere to be seen, leaving the ocean itself a beautiful blue, and as flat as a millpond.
There wasn't time to admire it, though; her belly was howling with hunger. She'd burned a lot of energy in the storm and more building her home and she didn't have much left to spare. If she lost much more weight, she'd just float off the next time a wind blew.
When she first saw bottom, she was sure that it was an optical illusion. While she didn't know exactly how deep the ocean was, she knew that it was deep enough to cover an entire ship, masts and all, and she also knew that you usually couldn't see more than a few dozen ponylengths through the water. There were too many minerals and things in the water.
Plus, there wasn't any land around. If she'd been drifting towards an island, she might have believed that she was really seeing the bottom . . . but then, if she'd been drifting towards an island, she would have already abandoned her cloud and been flying there, not looking down at the ocean hoping to see a school of fish swimming by or a small raft of seaweed.
Then she started seeing pony-like shapes in the water.
She was sure that those were hallucinations. She'd already learned that hunger and sleep deprivation could bring them on, and the easiest way to reveal them for the fraud they were was to close her eyes for a few seconds and then re-open them. They would come back, generally, but they would be different than they were before.
The underwater ponies didn't change. They, and the bottom, stayed exactly the same as it had been.
She still didn't believe it, not until she saw a very pony head come above the water and look around curiously. Not up—she remained unseen. A moment later, several other heads joined the first, and she could faintly hear conversation. It was a language she did not know, but that didn't matter. Lots of sailorponies talked in different languages and she couldn't understand them but there was still a rhythm and a lilt to talking even if she didn’t know what was being said.
If there were ponies in the water, than there was food, too, and so she kicked off her cloud and glided down in a broad arc, keeping an eye on the strange ponies.
Unfortunately, they saw her, and before she could get too close, she heard shouts of alarm and they vanished below the waves.
I must look like a predator to them, she thought. Especially since I came out of nowhere. Sailors said that the merponies were shy, but they also said that they'd help you where you were in distress, and she qualified for that.
Even though it pained her to lose all her momentum, she splashed down in the water and gracelessly came to a stop. Then she waited and hoped.
For the longest time, they didn't return, and Cloud was left bobbing in the middle of the ocean, terrifyingly alone. Somehow, pony-paddling in the water felt more isolated than when she was up in her cloudraft—maybe it was because she couldn't see as far, or because the horizon line was now in the wrong place.
She stuck her head under the water and tried to look around, although paradoxically, she couldn't see as far as she could when she was up above the water's surface.
She thought that there were pony-shapes off in the distance, but she couldn't be sure. The ocean water was tricking her.
Up above, her cloud stayed in place. What wind there had been had died off completely.
All of a sudden, they were around her. Where one moment before, there had been nothing but open ocean, now there was a ring of curious faces.
Cloud paddled in place until they got their courage up and realized that she was no threat. Then they began to close in on her, some of them remaining on the surface, while others dove back under the water.
She hoped she wasn't wrong about their intentions. If she was, she didn't have a chance.
The ponies that surrounded her stopped just out of hoof's reach, and studied her before the silvery-green one finally spoke. “Wat dochsto hjir? Hat jo skip sink yn 'e stoarm?”
“Binne jo yn need?” a second one asked.
Her ears drooped. A few words sounded like they were almost Equestrian, but she couldn't understand them. “Hungry,” she said. “Food.” She lifted a hoof up to her mouth, hoping that they wouldn't misunderstand.
“Hun-gry,” the silvery-green one mimicked, then turned to a grey-blue mare. “Ik tink dat it sky hynder sei dat se honger is.”
“Ik sil sejinge en fisk krije.” The grey-blue mare disappeared below the surface, followed by several of her friends.
Cloud watched them go with a bit of apprehension. Hopefully they could see that she needed help, and they weren't off to find reinforcements—not that she would be much trouble. If they tried to mob her, there was very little chance that she could get herself clear of the water before they were on top of her.
They seemed trustworthy, and when she thought about it more cynically, she didn't have all that many other options anyways.
“Binne der oaren?” Once the silver-green mare had Cloud's attention, she repeated her question, and then splashed around in the water a little before dropping her head slightly under the surface. The ponies near her imitated her motions, and then those that were a bit further away lifted them up and paddled them away.
Cloud struggled to make sense of the pantomime, before realizing that she was asking if there were other ponies who needed help.
She shook her head. “Only me. I got blown out to sea in a storm.” She pointed up to her cloud.
“Stoarm.” The silver-green mare made thunder noises and lifted her forehooves up, letting water drip off them into the ocean.
Cloud nodded. “Big storm.”
“Gjin skip?” She made bobbing motions with her hooves.
She pointed up to her cloud again.
“Skippen hawwe skypels mei her,“ one of the other seaponies remarked.
The silver-green mare nodded. “Miskien is se út har skip blaas.”
“Do you know where land is?”
“Wy sjogge gjin skip.”
“It kin wêze fan Opstân.”
Their brief discussion was interrupted by the return of their companions. They proudly held a large fish—much larger than Cloud had ever attempted to catch—along with several thick bundles of seaweed.
The fish was tempting. It was quick energy, and that was something her body needed, badly. But a pony wasn't meant to live on fish alone, and there were minerals and vitamins that the fish couldn't provide, which made the seaweed look even more appetizing.
She awkwardly paddled over to the closest merpony, and reached for the food, then hesitated. I hope they're offering this to me.
A pair of hooves thrust it forward, the signal unmistakable. Cloud leaned in and eagerly ate a mouthful, then another.
It was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted, and before she even realized what she'd done, the entire pile was gone.
“Se wie honger!”
The merponies around her all chuckled, but she didn't care.
• • •
She stayed with them for a week. She brought down her cloud, much to their amazement, and during the day she helped them hunt fish. Cloud could spot them when they were quite a ways away, and direct the merponies to where the fish were.
In return, she got all the seaweed she could eat, and she also got to share a fish with them. They'd called it giele fin tún, and she didn't know what that was but it was big and delicious.
One morning when she woke up, they were gone. Or, more properly, she was. The winds had picked back up, and she'd drifted away from them.
She knew in her heart that she'd never find them again, but that didn't stop her from spending most of the day circling around, hoping against hope that she might be reunited, but it was not to be.
Somehow, losing them was even sadder than when she'd first drifted out to sea, and she couldn't understand why that was so.
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All of a sudden, they were around her. Where one moment before, there had been nothing but open ocean, now there was a ring of curious faces.
Cloud paddled in place until they got their courage up and realized that she was no threat. Then they began to close in on her, some of them remaining on the surface, while others dove back under the water.
She hoped she wasn't wrong about their intentions. If she was, she didn't have a chance.
The ponies that surrounded her stopped just out of hoof's reach, and studied her before the silvery-green one finally spoke. “What are you doing here? Did your ship sink in the storm?”
“Are you in distress?" a second one asked.
Her ears drooped. A few words sounded like they were almost Equestrian, but she couldn't understand them. “Hungry,” she said. “Food.” She lifted a hoof up to her mouth, hoping that they wouldn't misunderstand.
“Hun-gry,” the silvery-green one mimicked, then turned to a grey-blue mare. “I think that the sky horse said she is hungry.”
“I will get seaweed and fish.” The grey-blue mare disappeared below the surface, followed by several of her friends.
Cloud watched them go with a bit of apprehension. Hopefully they could see that she needed help, and they weren't off to find reinforcements—not that she would be much trouble. If they tried to mob her, there was very little chance that she could get herself clear of the water before they were on top of her.
They seemed trustworthy, and when she thought about it more cynically, she didn't have all that many other options anyways.
“Are there others?” Once the silver-green mare had Cloud's attention, she repeated her question, and then splashed around in the water a little before dropping her head slightly under the surface. The ponies near her imitated her motions, and then those that were a bit further away lifted them up and paddled them away.
Cloud struggled to make sense of the pantomime, before realizing that she was asking if there were other ponies who needed help.
She shook her head. “Only me. I got blown out to sea in a storm.” She pointed up to her cloud.
“Stoarm.” The silver-green mare made thunder noises and lifted her forehooves up, letting water drip off them into the ocean.
Cloud nodded. “Big storm.”
“No boat?” She made bobbing motions with her hooves.
She pointed up to her cloud again.
“Ships have sky horses with them,“ one of the other seaponies remarked.
The silver-green mare nodded. “Maybe she got blown away from her ship.”
“Do you know where land is?”
“We saw no ship.”
“It could have come from Prance.”
Their brief discussion was interrupted by the return of their companions. They proudly held a large fish—much larger than Cloud had ever attempted to catch—along with several thick bundles of seaweed.
The fish was tempting. It was quick energy, and that was something her body needed, badly. But a pony wasn't meant to live on fish alone, and there were minerals and vitamins that the fish couldn't provide, which made the seaweed look even more appetizing.
She awkwardly paddled over to the closest merpony, and reached for the food, then hesitated. I hope they're offering this to me.
A pair of hooves thrust it forward, the signal unmistakable. Cloud leaned in and eagerly ate a mouthful, then another.
It was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted, and before she even realized what she'd done, the entire pile was gone.
“She was hungry!”
The merponies around her all chuckled, but she didn't care.
Most of what the merponies said came across from context, but the translation is great - they had no idea she was asking about land. Awaiting more comments to find out what language they are speaking.
This story is awesome!
8515764
google-translate and autodetect language did the trick ;-)
Oh god, that was beautiful and sad... I think I've become really invested in Cloud.
This is now officially my current favourite story.
I had the same feeling I sometime get whenever reading some latin language like portuguese or romanian: close enough to french that I can recognise a few thing and deduce the rest, far enough to be only that: guesses.
The frisian felt the same with english. But hey! With the context it was sligthly easier.
Rats, and here I was hoping for an appearance by Princess Skystar and company. But this is a G3 based story, so... Anyways, I love this take on the Seaponies, interesting culture though I was half expecting them to try and pull Cloud under given some of the legends told by sailors about Mermaids.
Well, at least she got some social contact. Beyond that... yeah, I don't see things changing for Cloud too much in the near future beyond similar twists of fate.
Maybe they didn't pick up her words for land but assuming they know what land is you'd think they'd point her in the general direction or at least a shipping route. They apparently know where Prance is. They must know that the above water ponies tend to come from land.
the seapony language looks kinda readable to me, it may be related to the dutch language.
loved the chapter especially since i would love doing storm weather stuff to
8516168
Frisian is one of the closest surviving ancestors of Old English before it was bastardized by the Norman frogspeak.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHzvYltPyWa-TPD3kKRGvG97wBHuUqVYo
Old Ponish and Seaponies are both canon now. I wonder what the Ponish equivalent of Norman was. Probably not the Gryphon language.
Also, ponies used futhark runes in "Ponehenge."
derpicdn.net/img/view/2017/10/9/1556034__safe_screencap_shadow+play_leak_spoiler-colon-s07e25_futhark_poni_pony+power_runes_translation_written+equestrian.png
What? Noseapony thought to mention land? They know of Prance, after all.
Are they sedentary seaponies, or migratory? If the latter, why didn't they follow Cloud?
8517117
Perhaps they were also asleep?
8515764
Even if they had known, they probably wouldn't have been that much help.
Oh, it's Frisian.
8515776
Thanks!
8515790
Thank you!
8515799
That happens to my mom a lot. She speaks a bunch of Romance languages (French, Spanish, and Italian), and can probably roughly translate a few other similar languages.
I don't know for sure how it actually sounds (finding YouTube videos in Frisian was kind of challenging), but from the spelling it looked like a lot of words would be kinda close. Maybe close enough to get a sort of gist of the conversation.
8515827
Unfortunately, no Skystar. She is cute, though. And kind of dumb.
As I recall, it was more often the sirens that would eat sailors, although in some mythologies the mermaids were known for it, as well. I seem to remember a movie not all that long ago that did have man-eating mermaids in it. Maybe it was one of the Harry Potter movies?
8515909
One little touch of social contact after months at sea is probably well worth it. Other than finding another group of merponies (or the same one again), there's not much else for her to find out in the open ocean. Not unless she finally gets lucky and spots a ship.
8516037
They know at least that above-water ponies come from ships, and can't survive without them. They also likely know where some of those ships come from (such as Prance), and may or may not know which way it is.
But, unless it's within a day's flight (and if it was, she might be able to see lights at night), knowing what direction land is in isn't terribly useful. Knowing where the winds are blowing in the right direction to push her to land would be helpful, although the merponies probably don't know that.
If I were on a lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic, I'd know that there is land to the east of me and land to the west of me . . . eventually.
8516168
According to Wikipedia, it's about halfway between Dutch and English.
I can't imagine how awesome and terrifying it would be to be up in a storm.
8516444
I forgot about Twilight speaking Old Ponish (because of course she does).
Which arguably makes Viking ponies canon.
orig00.deviantart.net/f4d6/f/2017/039/d/8/startled_viking_pony_by_ironm17-dayb680.png
8517117
But do they know how far away it is, or just that ships come from it?
Sedentary. They live in a shallow spot in the ocean.
8517213
Imagine if they had chased the wrong cloud. I bet merponies have a hard time telling one cloud apart from another.
It is like it is almost Dutch or Old English... There are just enough cognates that I can pretend to read and understand what the seaponies are saying.
Ah! That explains it.
I think you did a pretty good job with the conversation. A careful reader could probably grasp the main elements of the conversation through the context and interactions between the ponies even if they did not know Frisian.
I was thinking it was maybe Icelandic or Norwegian, but yeah, Frisian's supposed to be the next closest to English after Scots. Which linguists get into fistfights over whether it's just an English dialect or a distinct language in and of itself.
8516444
Once Friesian was mentioned, I thought about this- "Brown Cow" from Eddie Izzard's Mongrel Nation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34
8517578
It could have been Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
As long as you simply signal SOS, that is.
Between German and English and a few words of Dutch, I can figure this out.
Based on your comment, I'm guessing that Opstân is Prance.
(The literal translation of Opstân seems to be "rebellion", though?)
8518549
From what Wikipedia says, that's pretty much what Frisian is.
Yeah, and to be honest I did a little bit of work to make it not too close to English. It's certainly close enough that without the translation you can sort of follow the conversation.
8519925
Yeah, it's supposedly a really close cousin to English. As for Scots . . . I had a friend who got married and moved to Scotland, and when her parents-in-law answered the phone, I couldn't understand a single word they said, even though it was theoretically English(ish).
8520487
That's really cool!
8520707
You're not the only one to have suggested it. That might be what it was.
8521142
As long as you simply signal SOS, that is.
That's really all you need.
Yes; that's what Google translated Prance to. Obviously, Google Translate isn't very good at pony puns.
Hm, one can wonder what kind of magic _those_ merponies might have and use! And how/from whom they branched! {finally resolved my little reader's block)
8877843
I'm not entirely sure. I'd think that they'd have some kind of Earth-pony type of magic, but focused towards the water or aquatic plants. Maybe fish, too.
Their origin is also a bit inexplicable, but then again, how do you explain where pegasi or unicorns came from? Traditional, mundane genetics could maybe explain unicorns and earth ponies as being the same species but one being a hornless variant of the other (or vice versa), but it's harder to explain pegasi.
they were fellow ocean dwellers, thats why she was saddened
I really like how they helped her. I felt so worried for her. Also the way the sea ponies talked reminded me of my Dutch friend, hehe
11720126
As well they should, they were speaking Frisian which is a language spoken in Germany and the Netherlands (it's also a breed of horse, which I assume came from there).
It's also very closely related to English; IIRC one Frisian dialect is nearly identical to Old English.